


the spaces that divide us

by eternalheatstroke



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, Introspection, Kerberos Mission, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Season/Series 07 Finale, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Seasons 1-7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 05:38:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16423442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternalheatstroke/pseuds/eternalheatstroke
Summary: In retrospect, Shiro feels sick that he took some sort of twisted pride from being put in this position. Proud to be piloting his first deep-space mission, proud to be the youngest pilot the Garrison had ever seen, proud to be one of the first people to see Kerberos and Pluto with his own eyes. He’s achieved more than he ever thought possible for himself in this moment, overcoming his own body to make it happen and severing his ties to Earth.The truth of the matter is that he’s terrified. Shiro can pretend it is pride motivating him until the day he dies, but the what if picks at him, chiseling him down slowly, so slowly.





	the spaces that divide us

**Author's Note:**

> "if i don't come back..." it's a phrase shiro finds himself using again and again.
> 
> title from "superposition" by young the giant (also heavily influenced by twenty one pilots' "neon gravestones")

**1.**

The first time Shiro brings it up, it’s because he wants to. This is an inevitable conversation in his line of work, but he chooses the terms. It’s just days before he’ll be rounded up for quarantine ahead of the Kerberos launch and he’s young and optimistic — and excited. He still looks at the stars in wonder and can’t quite wrap his head around what space flight will be like. How can anyone comprehend the vastness of the solar system when you’ve only seen it from a distance? He’s convinced the flight simulations don’t do it justice either.

He’s optimistic, but not naïve. Iverson wouldn’t have done his job if he hadn’t drilled the perils of space flight into Shiro by now, and he knows better than to assume everything will go exactly right. He’ll make it home, sure, but if Commander Holt’s stories of previous missions hold any weight it won’t be without a few scares first. He’s young, and he’s been burdened with a bright future — he’s allowed to romanticize that sometimes.

So, Shiro brings it up, that conversation he’s seen so many times in over-dramatic action movies where the hero has to leave, swearing he’ll return, but cautioning his loved ones that if he doesn’t…  _ If  _ he doesn’t, then they shouldn’t mourn for him. It’s supposed to reassure, soothe. He’ll be missed but the people he leaves behind won’t feel stuck, and he in turn won’t have to die with the guilt. That’s how it works.

In retrospect, Shiro feels sick that he took some sort of twisted pride from being put in that position. Proud to be piloting his first deep-space mission, proud to be the youngest pilot the Garrison had ever seen, proud to be one of the first people to see Kerberos and Pluto with his own eyes. He’s achieved more than he ever thought possible for himself in this moment, overcoming his own body to make it happen and severing his ties to Earth.

The truth of the matter is that he’s terrified. Shiro can pretend it is pride motivating him until the day he dies, but the  _ what if _ picks at him, chiseling him down slowly, so slowly.

He tells Keith, because after Adam he has no one else, and he’ll kick himself for that later too. If Shiro is young then Keith is — too young. He may pretend that he can hold the world on his shoulders and throw punches while doing it, but Shiro has seen through that façade. He sees it again when he tells Keith, the cracks that splinter across his face, eyes quickly flicking away to mask the pain there at the idea that Shiro wouldn’t come back, lost instead to the depths of space.

They’re in a familiar hangar, their Garrison bikes parked and powered down after a day in the desert. Shiro had hoped time spent doing something they both loved would make this part easier. Turns out his optimism doesn’t bleed into reality all that well. His hand on Keith’s shoulder seems an insignificant form of comfort in the face of Shiro’s  _ If I don’t make it back… _

Keith doesn’t respond, eyes cast down and hidden behind his hair, defiance evident in his rigid stance. Shiro feels his Garrison-golden-boy persona falter, the seeds of terror for the unknown threatening to break the walls he’s built up and suffocate him right here in front of Keith. 

“Don’t say that.” Keith finally speaks, but it doesn’t ease the tightness in Shiro’s chest like he thought it would. Maybe it’s because of the way Keith’s voice wavers, the way he breaks from Shiro’s hold and folds in on himself. Shiro wants to retract this whole conversation.

_ I’ll come back. I’ll be okay.  _ Shiro wishes these were things he could promise, but he doesn’t know for sure, does he? This is another one of those moments difficult to decipher looking backward. That impending sense of dread at what’s to come,  _ was that really him then _ ? The optimism of his youth and the suffering of his time in space swirl together until it’s impossible to pull them apart. 

“Keith, I’m sorry, I just want you to be prepared — just in case.” He pleads, but his words ring hollow in the gravity of what he faces. Keith knows this, and pins him with one of his glares, sullen and hurt, like a kicked puppy.

Shiro presses on, the mock sense of drama to his words replaced with something veiled and hidden. It’s unspoken that Shiro needs Keith to know that he won’t be left behind, even if Shiro doesn’t make it back. He’s not fully aware of the depth of the feeling in the moment, what it will mean to him looking back. If Keith ever mentioned it, Shiro would deny it, but he knows he’s leaving Keith isolated. The kid was never particularly great at making friends, and with no family to speak of… Shiro isn’t sure if he would deny it to soothe Keith or mask his own guilt.

He may be a rebellious troublemaker by Garrison standards, but Keith’s wedged his way into Shiro’s heart, an unlikely pair with more talent between the two of them than maybe the rest of the Garrison combined. The thought of Keith floundering in his absence is worrying. “Please, Keith. If I don’t come back, promise me you’ll stay here. Stay focused and don’t give up.”

Keith’s scowl falters as he mulls the request over half-heartedly. The desperation that sunk into Shiro’s words makes its impact though, and Keith allows, “I will… But you’ll come back, Shiro.”

Shiro breathes a sigh of relief and accepts Keith’s answer as a win, confidence returning to his posture. It’s the second of three mistakes he commits, the first being this entire conversation. This fleeting sense that all  _ will  _ be okay, as though Keith saying it proves the point. The third mistake follows close behind, as Shiro tugs Keith in to a hug that Keith doesn’t fight against begrudgingly for once. They stay there, and it’s bittersweet. An emotion akin to the sensation of drowning washes over Shiro, and so he allows himself a small indulgence. 

He may not know for sure what will happen, but he trusts his skills and the rest of his crew. He trusts his ship and he trusts Keith. So why not gamble on fate a little?

“I’ll come back, Keith.”

 

**2.**

The next time Shiro thinks of those terrible, terrible words they’re practically ripped out of him as a scream, flesh shredded across his side as the alien he fights hits its mark. His vision clouds dark and his knees buckle. This could be it — the gritty sand and dirt under his feet and beneath his fingernails mixing with his blood and sweat in throbbing stings, the chant and roar of the crowd pounding into his ears and shaking his bones.

_ If I don’t make it back… _

Shiro avoids the killing strike on pure luck, his own vertigo dropping him to the arena floor while claws sweep through the air where he once stood. His head thumps to the ground and clears his vision, a small blessing before he rolls out of the way and to his feet just in time to block another blow with his heavy, blunt sword. The monsters who’ve held him in this hell take sick joy in seeing him hack at the limbs of his fellow prisoners — his  _ enemy —  _ and inflict maximum pain with the dull blade.

When Shiro had first been handed the weapon, thrust into his arms several battles ago, he’d immediately thought of the thick, wooden swords at the Garrison, used for sparring without inflicting damage beyond bruising. But Shiro has honed exactly how to hold it for the least dull edges to hit their target, wielding it with slow but deadly accuracy if he can just strike the right angle on his opponent. 

These are the things that haunt him in the cells, and he finally understands what people mean when they say soldiers come back with extra baggage. 

But he’s not a soldier. Not really. He’s a pilot and a teacher and still young enough to get carded when he buys alcohol from the liquor store on that dusty, hot stretch of road between the Garrison and town. Shiro clings to those bits of himself, even as he’s scarred and battered and reformed in this arena that feels outside of time. 

But he’s not a soldier, and he isn’t sure he’ll be coming back.

In the end, Shiro dispatches the alien with a rip of metal through skin that’s rough and jagged, but not before the alien’s claws find purchase some more on his arm, his shoulder, his face. He catalogs these injuries but doesn’t react. Pain is weakness here.

Physical pain is one sensation Shiro has plenty of experience with. In a way, the marks of his battles obscure the torture of his muscles, unregulated and degrading without the regimen he maintained on Earth. It’s the psychological pain that crawls up Shiro’s throat and chokes him until he can’t breathe, cripples his ability to eat for days, and leaves him wracked with panicked sobs in his cell every night. It’s the pain that reminds him of promises made and promises broken.

Shiro replays his conversation with Keith over and over in his head during his time in captivity. Wishing he had never left space for the possibility that he would come back, wishing he’d done more to prepare Keith for the eventuality that he would die up here. His  _ what ifs _ that used to be worst case scenarios have become his last threads of hope.  _ What if he lives long enough to get out of here? What if he  _ can _ go home?  _  Of course, he squashes those thoughts quickly. Better to come to terms with his fate than hold on to some ridiculous vision of what could be. It’s not his capture that troubles him the most, it’s the people he left behind and those he couldn’t protect.

There is no escape, and he’ll die here.

It doesn’t evoke the deep pit of dread that it used to when he thinks that way. At least Shiro tells himself this. The aliens in cells adjacent to him whisper, so he knows he’s feared.  _ Champion, Champion, Champion  _ is a chant that drifts over him anytime he is pulled from his cell for a fight. He used to try to shake himself out of this killer mindset, this ruthlessness that floods his body at the prospect of a fight to the death, but now it’s almost a comfort. If he dies in the arena, he dies as the Champion — even if that means absolutely nothing to anyone who matters to Shiro. Even if everyone who matters already thinks he’s dead.

_I won’t come back_ is Shiro’s new mantra, or at least he pretends. In moments of resigned helplessness, he wills acceptance, wills himself to _give in, let go_ just for the semblance of peace of mind. He _didn’t_ come back.

This is easy enough to accept when bloodlust drips from his weapon and soaks into the sand of the arena. It’s easy when his arm is torn from his shoulder and replaced with something metallic and lethal, no longer a rounded blade but an extension of himself. 

It’s harder when he’s alone in the silence and darkness to grapple with these questions of mortality. Keith’s defiance in the face of his hedging and uncertainty is all he sees, and it breaks him, reminds him of who he was and who he wishes he could still be. And it’s in these private moments of weakness that Shiro clings to that hope, that impossible and crazy dream that he  _ will _ get out of this dungeon and off this ship. He swears and swears on the last bits of his own humanity.

 

**3.**

A Paladin of Voltron, Shiro finds those words on the tip of his tongue more often than he would like. When Keith rescues him, Shiro counts it a miracle that he escaped and somehow made it back to the one person in the universe he had so desperately wanted to see again. Stupidly, he thinks he can finally let the past die — his foggy memory only a vague echo of what he experienced. 

As good as it is to be back, the subsequent return to space and all of the universal war and responsibility that comes with it leaves Shiro questioning his place in it all. If he were a religious man, he might say it’s some divine punishment for a past life, some irreparable mistake that is putting him through the ringer in this life. He mentions it to Keith once, in a quiet moment stolen between battles and the commotion of the rest of the team. He’s only half joking. It’s one of the few times Shiro has allowed himself to be vulnerable since he’s returned, and it feels like scraping sandpaper over a wound. Keith looks at him with so much bottled-up pain in his eyes that Shiro feels guilty for opening his mouth in the first place.

Neither of them know how to approach this extra time they’ve suddenly been granted with each other. From what Shiro can gather, Keith never stopped looking for him, though by the end it was more routine than out of any real tangible hope. Shiro himself, usually so open and thoughtful with his feelings, suddenly feels uneasy and off-balance. He may not remember all of what happened to him since Kerberos, but he’s changed. It’s not just physical, though that’s initially all the rest of the team sees. It’s the nightmares, waking up in a cold sweat with his arm activated in a violent purple light in the darkness, and it’s his personality. Easy to laugh and quick to comfort before, now he finds himself unusually irritated. He reminds himself not to snap at all of Lance’s outbursts or Pidge’s arguing, but it’s difficult when prioritizing the long-term success of their mission over fleeting moments of happiness with the team. His humor has stuck with him, but it’s shriveled up and morbid in a way only he really seems to appreciate.

Still, it’s something he can fall back on. When his lion is thrown from the wormhole and crashes onto a desert planet, it’s all he can do to keep the panic from rising and consuming him. Here he is again — alone. It’s nearly laughable, in a crazed sort of way.

That is, until he hears the faint shouts over his headset: “-ro? Shiro! Come in, it’s Keith.”

“Keith! Keith, I’m here. I’m okay.” He slides uncomfortably against the rock he’s propped himself up against, the neon purple wound glinting against his armor a painful reminder of his earlier fight against the witch, Haggar. It digs up even more worrisome flashes of memory from other, similar scars already crisscrossing his sides and he thinks absently that he may faint. “It’ll take more than this to get rid of me.”

_ Keith is coming.  _

He hangs on to that fact for dear life as he’s ambushed by creatures that would have terrified him a few years ago, covered in purple scales and tusks sprouting garishly from their mouths. Now they only manage to trigger his survival instincts. Deep down, Shiro hates this resiliency. Though he grants that being eaten alive may not be the best way to go… If he has to choose between a poisonous Druid-inflicted gash or being swallowed, one may be faster and less painless than the other. 

Managing to outpace them as he rolls and slides down the boulder-filled canyon, Shiro wedges himself into a small hollow. He thinks he’s safe prematurely, and when the aliens start digging and catch a claw in his armor he shouts as he’s dragged out of the cave and flung into the rocks. His helmet is torn from his head, but he hears Keith, urgent. “Shiro, I’m coming! Hang on!”

The aliens swipe at him again, and Shiro barely dodges the blow. He’s breathing hard, his entire body on fire from the witch’s attack. He can’t keep this up.

Belatedly, Shiro realizes he’s allowed himself to be cornered in a narrower part of the canyon, and now the creatures surround him. He may have decided the end of this struggle for himself unconsciously, but of course this isn’t really what he wants. The fatalistic part of him chides that he’s probably escaped death more times than any person should have the right to, but he can’t leave Keith alone. Not again.

Keith seems to agree. The tail of the Black Lion whips over his head before she shakes the ground with a roar, scattering the aliens. Adrenaline and something akin to pride surges through Shiro at Keith’s good timing, but it’s instantly replaced with weary relief. Giving in, he sags to the ground, grinding his teeth through the pain lancing across his side. Now that he’s not fighting for his life, the pull of whatever Druid magic he was struck with rolls through him in waves of nausea. 

Jumping from Black, Keith reaches Shiro and grabs an arm to hold him steady. “Shiro? Shiro, hang in there.” With Keith’s help he manages to stand and limp to one of the cliff walls he’d been trapped between just moments ago; he eases against it with a groan of pain.

Keith dotes on him, running anxious hands across his armor and checking for new injuries. He hovers over the wound in Shiro’s side with a deep frown, eyebrows knit together so tightly Shiro has the urge to smooth them out with his thumb. He doesn’t, frustratingly aware that his mind is running away from him as the fevered pain climbs higher.

Shiro doesn’t let him touch it or remove his armor. “We may need to move quickly.” He huffs between strained breaths and Keith silently quirks and eyebrow at him before moving to build a fire. The truth is, Shiro doesn’t know if Haggar’s magic can spread to Keith, doesn’t want him to see the full extent of the damage. Shiro can feel the tendrils of poison flaring across his abdomen. He doesn’t want to know how large the wound is now. As Keith works to get the fire lit, Shiro watches him through half-lidded eyes, his gut urging him not to let himself be drawn into sleep. 

It’s obvious Keith has fared his own trials in Shiro’s absence during and after the Kerberos mission. Keith shies away from discussing it, and Shiro knows it’s because Keith’s scared to upset him, but Keith has changed too. He’s older, yes, but also more determined, hardened in a different way than Shiro but no less capable. There was a time when Shiro might have thought Keith would stumble without guidance, yet here he stands, the one who came to  _ Shiro’s _ rescue this time — multiple times. 

Warmth floods Shiro’s body slowly once the fire is blazing, and Shiro hadn’t realized he was so cold. A deep sense of awe for the man sitting next to him comes with the heat. Keith has more than earned his respect, if him piloting Black proves anything, and Shiro is struck all at once with the potential he sees there. It’s not like the potential he saw in Keith back on Earth, the rebellious, untrained teen who just needed to be challenged and pointed in the right direction. No, this is the potential he saw in himself before Kerberos, a future of unimaginable opportunity. And he wants to be there to see it all happen, right by Keith’s side, watching him succeed. It would be a more than acceptable bookend to the rollercoaster of his life so far. Shiro could live with that. 

But if he’s not there to see it all come to fruition, he knows Keith will manage just fine. There’s no one he’d trust more.

“Keith, if I don’t make it out of here… I want you to lead Voltron.” He says it steady enough to come across confident, even if his heart breaks at his own words. 

Keith stills where he’s settled down next to him, his posture defensive. “Stop talking like that. You’re gonna make it.” 

Shiro wants nothing more than to agree that he’s being foolish, that he doesn’t have to think that way anymore, but he can only bring himself to return Keith’s piercing stare with a sad smile. Sending up a silent wish to whoever might be listening, Shiro hopes Keith is right, hopes that he’s been through all the hardship he’ll ever have to bear in this lifetime. If that’s true, it means he’ll always have Keith’s back. It means he can pursue whatever this new thing between them might be, this new regard with which they seem to hold each other. 

That, like most of Shiro’s hopes, is wishful thinking.

 

**4.**

It’s left unspoken between them for a long time. 

With Voltron, the Coalition makes actual headway through a previously endless war. They push the Galra back and back, and though they take some losses they grow stronger as a team too. Shiro starts to think he may get his wish.

He knows taking this final fight to Zarkon is a gamble, but he’s completely blindsided by the sudden snap of electricity through Voltron, separating the lions and sizzling through Black’s controls. It’s white hot and burns worse than anything Shiro’s ever felt before. He opens his mouth to scream, but he’s not sure he has a mouth anymore, not sure he has a body. It’s dark and silent.

For a while, he’s there and he’s not. Alive and dead.

It’s only fitting, he thinks, that even death isn’t an escape from his own thoughts. His mind is a cruel, blunt voice that reminds him of what he’s left behind, what he desperately needs to return to. The  _ what ifs  _ are lingering again in this space between spaces. 

He doesn’t know what’s happened to the rest of the team — maybe they’re just like him, trapped in this endless void and stuck with their own regrets and fears. Shiro banishes the thought before it can take root, dwelling instead on the fact that this way his life might have meant more than he’d ever thought it could. He was more than the Champion, he was a Paladin of Voltron. Shiro takes solace in the fact that if this is his eternity then at least he accomplished more than the senseless killings of an unfortunate prisoner. 

He thinks of Keith. Shiro remembers the look of determination in his eyes as they’d gone to their lions, seeing each other for what neither of them knew would be the last time. They had projected confidence that neither of them actually felt, but were strong for each other’s sake. It doesn’t hurt him like he knows it should. Keith knew as well as Shiro what they meant to each other, even if it had never been spoken out loud. It was an old relationship wrapped up in a new package. One that would never get the chance to be more.

Shiro loses track of time. Not that there was ever time to observe wherever this may be, but he’s no longer sure if he’s been in the dark for a few hours or a few years. It’s easier to accept than he’d imagined. 

Until suddenly he’s in the light again, a purplish, starry expanse surrounding him to distant horizons on all sides. A rumble in the back of his mind is an achingly familiar presence, Black’s purr seeping safety and peace into Shiro’s being. There’s no confusion here, though part of Shiro notes that he would have questioned this turn of events had he still been alive. Now he’s simply grateful for a companion in this place. 

On this plain of stars and distant galaxies, Shiro imagines he sees glimpses of the Paladins, of events that never happened, as far as he can remember. He sees Allura, Lance, Hunk, and Pidge all sitting at Black’s helm, hands on the controls in either reverence or feigned purpose. He sees Keith, quietly pleading with a Shiro he doesn’t know is listening to come back:  _ I don’t want this. Please, no.  _ Black roars and the consoles light up around Keith, tears on his face glinting purple. 

Shiro’s not sure anymore that he’s imagining these flashes of a world without him in it. He watches Keith struggle and lash out, search day after day for a Shiro that no longer exists. The relief he had at being pulled out of the darkness is replaced with a bottomless sadness, turned despair.

_ Keith, I’m not coming back. _

But one day, he does. 

As far as Shiro can tell, this new him carries all of his predispositions and morals, dedicated to defeating the Galra and getting the Paladins home safe. The team is elated to have found him, but all Shiro can feel is dread. Dread as Keith relearns to lead with Shiro in his orbit, a Shiro that questions the roles Keith took on in his absence, undermining and destabilizing his fragile confidence. When Keith pulls away and retreats to the Blades it tears something in Shiro to see him go, but he understands.

It’s strange to watch himself from a distance, an out-of-body experience even though the body isn’t actually his. Shiro accepts when this other him begins piloting the Black Lion, even accepts when he helps Lotor secure his place on the Galra throne; he’s a new ally, and he only catches glimpses. With limited information, he can see himself making the same decisions. If he is trapped forever in this place, then at least the Paladins don’t have to cry over a body they never found, mourn for someone they don’t even realize is still missing. Shiro fights between the fear of where this duplicate came from, what its motives are, and the comfort it brings the team to return to a semblance of normalcy. 

When Keith returns, taller and surer than Shiro has ever seen him, he feels the snap in this other self before it happens. The realm he stands on has left him passive for so long, but a switch is flipped. Horror grips Shiro as he watches himself escape with Lotor, leaving the Paladins reeling in shock. He grasps desperately at any threads he may have to reality, trying to wind up space around him in an attempt to reach out. He’s done it before, once when the Paladins had called out for him, but he can’t seem to do it alone. His hands grab at nothing, his feet not even touching solid ground.

Of course, Keith follows. When Shiro sees the facility he is led to it all falls into place.  _ Clones, plural.  _ He should have known better than to assume Haggar’s grasp on him was severed at death.

This Shiro Keith fights isn’t him, his voice a ragged snarl that barely sounds human, but somehow Keith faces him down. Shiro isn’t sure where Keith went in the time he disappeared from Shiro’s line of sight, but here he stands, unwavering and determined to leave with this Shiro that isn’t Shiro — though Keith understands that now. 

Shiro knows what Keith should do. Destroy the clones, destroy the facility, save Voltron. These are cut and dry facts.  _ I’m not coming back, I’m not coming back, I’m already gone.  _ Shiro doesn’t realize he’s whispering until Keith speaks, cutting through the jabs of the clone.

“I’ll never give up on you. I’m not leaving here without you.”

The words echo Shiro’s own, spoken all those years ago when they thought their lives would be much less exceptional, much less dangerous. They are meant to comfort, but the clone isn’t deterred. The Galra arm that Shiro had managed to use for good for so long now contorts into a twisted canon and blasts the facility apart. Keith falls and falls, nearly missing the last platform before an endless fall back to the planet beneath them. Shiro can only watch on bated breath as the clone follows him down to finish the job. Their swords meet, Keith straining against the weight, losing the fight, appealing to the clone to no avail—

“I love you.”

The surge of energy Shiro feels in and around him is secondary to his fear as he watches Keith hang from the broken platform as it collapses, clone dangling below him. The knife slips, detaches, and they fall. Keith doesn’t fight it anymore, but Shiro does. 

In a burst of control, Shiro funnels his will to the Black Lion, and she finally responds. The effort feels as though he’s losing his body all over again, searing heat coursing through his limbs and engulfing him. Swooping them out of a free-fall, Black catches Keith and the clone. Shiro will have time to wonder how exactly he managed it later. For now, he closes his eyes and lets the energy fade. He takes comfort from the fact that Keith is alive, he survived. 

When Shiro opens his eyes, he has to blink to be sure what he’s seeing isn’t just a distant mirage, but no. Keith stands in front of him, battered from his fight and fresh scar marking his face. He’s terrified and confused, reaching for his blade when his eyes finally settle on Shiro.

Shiro knows he looks nothing like the other him Keith had grown accustomed to. He probably looks like a ghost, this space outlining him in the glow of the stars. Keith staggers back, incredulous. “Shiro…?”

He tries to explain, tells Keith what he knows, murmuring it so as not to startle him off. Shiro isn’t certain about anything that’s happened to him and doesn’t know how much time has passed. The only thing he knows for certain — “I died, Keith.”

Keith erupts in shock, Shiro can feel it radiating off of him, but he also feels his own control waning. The effort of catching Keith’s fall was too much, and a prolonged conversation will have to wait. Keith panics as Shiro fades, but Shiro feels a strange sense of calm now. Somehow, he knows he’ll speak to Keith again, and the tug of darkness that had wrapped around his mind eases. He feels grounded and sturdy like he hasn’t for so long, rooted half in both worlds and tied to Keith.

He watches Keith return, take control of Black and race to save the team from a battle Shiro can’t fully place. He knows without seeing that Lotor has turned on them, Black’s own consciousness supplying the information. In the face of his fight against the clone and this betrayal, Keith manages surprisingly well, but he still won’t make it in time. 

Shiro understands the urgency and feels as if he’s hovering over Keith, urging him and Black on. Keith grips the controls tighter and cries out in frustration as the rest of the team pleads for him to hurry over the comms. He begs for Shiro’s help, his guidance again, and his surge of emotion is enough to transport him back into Shiro’s realm.

If this is Shiro’s last chance to help the team, to help  _ Keith _ , then he knows exactly what to do. “Keith, you can get to them, but you must see them first.” He reaches out and touches Keith’s shoulder, his first contact in god knows how long and it only steadies his resolve. “Patience yields focus.”

Keith hums with energy as he accepts the advice and channels the Black Lion’s power. Shiro watches with pride. This is the Keith he always knew, the Keith who could lead Voltron and save the universe. Reminded now, Keith is victorious. “I can see them.”

Ripped back to the physical plane to fight this battle, Shiro doesn’t feel pain or sadness or regret when Keith goes. Instead, he closes his eyes, funnels all of his power, his quintessence, into Black once again.  _ Let him get there in time. _ And then he finally lets go. 

 

**5.**

“You found me.”

Shiro doesn’t remember saying those words, falling into Keith’s arms in a body that doesn’t quite fit. He feels like a canvas pulled too tight across a frame, ready to rip and tear at the slightest pressure. 

He doesn’t have much time to adjust. Keith made it his vendetta to get Shiro back, but they still have the bigger picture to worry about. They pile into the lions and begin the long trek across the universe to Earth. The idea of getting to go home is something Shiro gave up on a long time ago, and he isn’t even sure that Earth qualifies anymore. Everything feels foreign, even the Black Lion, despite his prolonged stint with just her for company. Shiro finds himself desperate to latch onto something familiar, something comforting… But that’s easier said than done when one’s attachment to the world is now channeled through the very body that tried to kill his best friend, nearly destroyed Voltron.

Keith’s made it clear he doesn’t blame Shiro, neither do the rest of the team. Much to the contrary, Keith comments that it was only because of Shiro that he was able to make it back and Voltron was able to defeat Lotor. Shiro is skeptical.

Now that he has a physical body to contend with again, the memories of his time in that other place and those of the other him mingle and mix in stark contrast. Shiro remembers every unsettling detail, and it’s harder and harder to separate one self from the other as he adjusts to the clone’s body. His deeds weigh on him with crushing guilt.

Never one to be inconsistent, Keith insists that Shiro shouldn’t beat himself up over what he couldn’t control. He whispers it to Shiro, soothing him when he jolts awake from nightmares where their fight ends with a decisive and ruthless swing of Shiro’s blade, no hesitation and no remorse. 

“We came back, Shiro. We’re okay.” Keith repeats until his breathing evens out, until he pushes that part of himself away and back into the depths of his mind.

They both carry these  _ what ifs _ , but all they can do is cope. Together.

They make it to Earth only to find devastation, and Shiro isn’t sure what to feel. He never thought he would be back here alive. That simple joy carries him through the heartbreak of the rubble that’s left, of feeling without a place on the team or on Earth. Nevertheless, he is still their best liaison between Voltron and the Garrison, working alongside Keith and fulfilling a wish he never dreamed he would. 

He’s relieved to take a rest from the constant demands of space, busying himself with battle strategy and logistics, but he also never imagined he’d miss it — that thrill of adrenaline as he formed Voltron, that drive to go beyond the limits of what is assumed to be possible.

That emptiness isn’t helped by the storied atmosphere that clings to the halls of the Garrison. Shiro thinks the young officer that left on the Kerberos mission so long ago is just another version of himself, yet another replica that is him but isn’t. He knows Keith feels the sad nostalgia that clings to the buildings too, often finding him staring into the middle-distance, caught in a memory. They remain the only constants in each other’s lives, somehow battling time and space to make it back to where they started. They may not be who they were, but neither is Earth.

When Sam Holt shows him the Atlas for the first time, Shiro feels the recognizable pull of a connection. He dismisses it; he desperately wants to fill the gap in himself, but Earth technology no matter how advanced can’t replicate the lions. That is, until he’s desperate to save his team — to save Keith — as they’re pummeled by Sendak’s attacks again and again. They’re running out of options. The connection is back, and strong. Shiro gives himself over to it, and feels a missing piece of his soul return. The Atlas is unwieldy, raw power, different from the lions’ sense of stability. Shiro yearns for the challenge. 

They win, but the cost is high. 

Shiro isn’t sure he’ll ever rid himself of the image of the fall. The Lions’ trajectories burned into his eyes, and he adds it to his collection of haunts.

Miraculously, all of the Paladins survive, walking away from some time in the hospital with scrapes and bruises. Keith is less lucky, but still alive. Shiro chalks that up to divine intervention, something he’s grown to believe in more firmly since he returned. 

Now they have time on Earth, time that is calculable but definite with the looming final battle on the horizon. Shiro finds himself spending most of it next to Keith. Once again, they’ve faced down different paths, different challenges that have threatened to rip them apart, yet here they stand.

Shiro doesn’t want to open old wounds, but he can’t help laughing at the irony of it all. Keith is just as relieved these days, both of them acutely aware of how close their nightmares came to reality. Why dwell on the  _ what ifs _ when they finally have a desirable  _ now _ ?

There will be plenty of time for his brain to play out all of the scenarios that never happened, the fears embedded into his soul through too many sleepless nights. For now, he holds Keith close and tells him his dreams, hopes, wishes. He’ll allow himself this grace. 

“I love you too, Keith.”

“I know.”

Shiro knows, with a surety that he would have scoffed at before all of this, when he was determined to make something of himself regardless of the consequences. Now, he knows he had no idea the magnitude of those choices. Yet, by some twist of fate, he beat them back — with help. Shiro knows, as he grips Keith’s hand in his own, that there is nowhere else he has to go and nothing that could take him away. He came back, to stay. 

**Author's Note:**

> i've been sitting on an introspective shiro fic since i started watching vld. his character is so complex and i just had to try and get inside his head! i hope i do him justice. i love my boy!!! :')
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> [tumblr](http://eternal-heatstroke.tumblr.com/)  
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